


Dancing Lessons

by Samayla



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Dancing, F/M, First Dance, Fluff, Marriage Proposal, Nessian - Freeform, Original Character - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 15:15:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13126350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samayla/pseuds/Samayla
Summary: Cassian has the perfect plan.Good thing he has help.





	Dancing Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> On Tumblr: http://samayla.tumblr.com/post/168892594774/fic-dancing-lessons-cassian-has-the-perfect-plan

“What are you doing?”

Cassian froze mid-step, and Lyra stumbled, her ballgown of woven music evaporating with a discordant screech. Torn between annoyance at being interrupted and horror at being caught, he turned slowly, keeping a protective hold on the child’s hand.

But the alley behind the opera house appeared deserted as usual.

“Who’s there?” Lyra called, stepping in front of him, her high voice sharp and cutting. The strains of music pouring from the open window turned sour, then parted like a sea before her wrath.

Azriel stepped out of the shadow of a trash bin, hands out in surrender. “Just a friend.”

“What are you doing here, Az?”

Inside, the orchestra started up again, but Lyra batted the music away like a pesky fly, still staring hard at Azriel and his clinging shadows.

“Lyra!” The angry shout seemed to come from the very air around them.

The child hung her head. “Coming, Maestro,” she mumbled, though Cassian had no doubt the sound carried perfectly back inside. She turned to him, but eyed Azriel warily over her shoulder. “Will you be okay, Cass?” she whispered.

Cassian knelt and kissed the back of her hand like a knight in one of her stories. “Of course, milady. This idiot’s a friend of mine. Don’t worry.”

“Same time tomorrow? You’ve almost got it now, I think.”

“It’s a date!” Cassian winked at the girl. He and Az watched as she flounced up the steps and disappeared into the opera house with a flourishing curtsy.

“What are you doing here, Az?” Cassian repeated.

Azriel didn’t take his eyes from the stage door Lyra had used, as if he could still see her through wood and stone. He looked troubled. “I heard a rumor,” he said distantly.

Cassian sighed. “Call off your shadows and leave her be. Let’s go somewhere else to talk.”

Azriel jolted. “I would never hurt her, Cass! You know that.”

“I do,” Cassian reassured him, “but that little beastie can hear everything - particularly the things she shouldn’t!”

In confirmation, a giggle bounced eerily around the alley.

“Lyra!” came the Maestro’s shout again, like a door slamming in their faces.

“As can others,” he added ruefully. “Come on. I don’t want her getting into any more trouble today.” They took off and by unspoken agreement, they made their way to an empty little park on the Sidra. Cassian and Azriel had each found the park separately decades earlier, back when Rhys was still captive Under the Mountain, and the tiny patch of wilderness in the midst of the busy city had become their haven.

“Is she yours?” Az blurted as soon as he touched down in the tall grass beside the river.

Cassian was so startled he almost didn’t stick the landing. “Mine!? Cauldron, no, Az! Of course not!”

Azriel was unimpressed. “You don’t dance either, so I’m afraid there’s no ‘of course’ about it.”

Cassian sighed. There’d be no getting around this conversation. “She’s a friend of Feyre’s, alright? She’s helping me with something.”

“With learning to dance.” It wasn’t a question, though the eyebrow Az arched suggested more explanation was due.

“With learning to dance,” Cassian agreed.

His friend’s eyebrow climbed higher. When Cassian still didn’t explain further, he folded his arms and leaned up against the boulder behind him. “That was Nesta’s favorite song,” he prompted.

Sometimes Cass hated that his best friend was the spymaster.

“Her favorite opera,” Az added after a moment.

“I’m going to propose,” Cassian snapped at last, kicking out at a tuft of dandelions and making the fluffy white seeds scatter in the breeze. “Lyra’s helping me practice so it will be perfect.” He didn’t meet his friend’s eyes, embarrassed.

Azriel’s lips pressed into a thin line. “You are good enough, Cass,” he murmured. “Don’t ever doubt that - certainly not for - “

“I know that,” Cassian interrupted him. “But I don’t want the one I love to settle for ‘good enough,’ you know? She makes me want to be better.” Azriel caught himself before he said something they’d both regret, but Cassian could read his thoughts clearly in the tense silence. “Nesta isn’t easy,” he agreed, finally meeting his eyes. “I don’t imagine she ever will be, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t worth the work.”

Azriel nodded. He could respect that. “When?”

Cassian swallowed. “Tomorrow night. One more practice with Lyra, and then Feyre will invite her sister to the show tomorrow night for me, and I’ll get her outside somehow.”

Azriel’s eyebrow arched again, but this time he was smiling. “Somehow? As plans go, Cass, this isn’t your most foolproof.”

Cassian punched him in the arm. “It’ll be fine. Just have a little faith.”

 

But it wasn’t fine.

“She says she has other plans tonight,” Feyre explained over tea and toast in the townhouse kitchen the next morning. “I’m sorry, Cassian. Maybe another night?”

“It’s their final show of the season.”

“Maybe another show then?” she offered. “There’s always something.”

“I only learned the one dance,” Cassian answered miserably, sinking back into his chair with his head in his hands. His toast lay cold and forgotten on the plate before him. “What am I supposed to do now?”

Feyre poured him a fresh cup of tea. “You’ll come up with a new plan, of course. Maybe Lyra can help you come up with something. She’s quite in love with the idea of helping you propose, you know.”

“That’s it!” Cassian lurched to his feet.

“What’s it?”

“Thank you, Feyre!” He kissed the top of her head, gulped down his tea, and dashed out the door, ignoring the confused calls that chased him into the sky.

Lyra was waiting in the alley when he got to the opera house, having heard him coming. “You’re early,” she griped, stifling a yawn in her sleeve. “They won’t be starting rehearsal for another hour yet - the Maestro’s not even out of bed!”

“Change of plans,” Cassian said. “Nesta’s not coming tonight.”

“What? Why not?” The sounds of the street behind them grew disordered, jumbled voices and creaking carts and grunting animals tangling together until they were an unrecognizable snarl. “She has to come!”

Cassian knelt before her and took her hands in his. “Easy, love,” he soothed. “I have a plan - or the beginnings of one, anyway. I need your help.”

The girl grinned, and everything returned to normal, aside from a few confused pedestrians out on the street. “What can I do?”

“Can you get out of rehearsals today?”

“Will you buy me breakfast?” she countered.

 

“You’re sure you can pull the music this far?” Cass asked again, peering out across the sparkling city sprawled below the House of Wind.

“Of course I can,” Lyra pouted, turning to face the starry night. She was just tall enough to see over the balcony rail. “They haven’t started playing just yet. You just worry about finding Nesta in time.”

“Az said he’d brought her up here. Probably hiding in the library.”

But she wasn’t in the library. Or the kitchen, or any of the living spaces or spare bedrooms. Cassian flung himself down on the sofa nearest Lyra’s balcony. “She’s not here.”

Lyra wasn’t listening, focused entirely on coaxing the opening notes of the overture across the city.

“Who’s not here?” Nesta asked as she came down the stairs from the training arena on the roof and tucked something hastily into the pocket of her dress. “Where is that music coming from?” she asked, cocking her head to better hear the faint, eerie strands of melody.

Cassian was too surprised to put his plan into action. “What were you doing up there?” Lyra swatted the back of his head with a brash run of sixteenth notes. “Dance with me, Nesta,” he blurted. Then bowed as an afterthought.

“You don’t dance.”

Cassian grabbed her hand and pulled her in anyway as the music swelled, seeming to emanate from the very stone around them. “Just dance with me,” he said with a grin to cover his nerves.They made it through a few clumsy turns before he stepped on her toes, and she acted like he was killing her. He rolled his eyes. “Would you just let me lead, please?”

“Lead where?” Nesta snapped, leaning against the back of the sofa to rub at her toes. “Right off the balcony?”

“Just - I have a plan, Nes. Please?”

“You have a plan,” she repeated flatly, but she stepped into his arms and allowed him to take the lead.

“I always have a plan,” he assured her with another cocky grin.

“That’s not reassuring, you know.” But she was smiling in spite of herself. There was color in her cheeks, and she was stepping closer than he thought she’d allow, and he realized he was actually doing it.

He was dancing with Nesta.

There was one thing left to do, but he didn’t want to break the spell yet. He didn’t want to risk her refusing him yet, and perhaps that made him a coward, but he wasn’t ready to propose.

Somehow understanding his feelings, or perhaps just enjoying the sight of the pair of them dancing far too much, Lyra gradually slowed the music. It became slow and languorous, and they danced as if through honey, thick and clinging.

The music wrapped around them. One turn, and Nesta’s bodice began to glow. Another, and her skirt filled out to become that of a glowing, golden ballgown. Cassian’s simple black tunic was covered by an ornate golden jacket, and a weight on his head led him to suspect a simple golden circlet had appeared to match the one on Nesta’s brow.

Lyra was dressing them in music like they were dolls, but Cassian found he did not mind. Flowers began glowing around them, obscuring the sofa and chairs. They were no longer dancing in the living room, but inside the music itself, where everything was fizzy and perfectly gilded.

As the music hit its final crescendo, swelling to fill the air around them, Cassian could feel it nudging him to ask. The notes lingered, buoying them up for one glorious moment, before Cassian dropped to a knee before Nesta in the resonant silence that followed. He pulled the ring out of his pocket and stared hard at it for a moment while he gathered his words. This was the only part he hadn’t practiced with Lyra, and he wanted to be sure he got it right. “Nesta, -”

“Of course I will, you overgrown bat.”

Cassian looked up in shocked indignation, only to see that Nesta was holding out a ring of her own. “I - had… I had a plan -” he managed.

“It was a good plan.” Nesta leaned down and kissed him once on the forehead. She pulled back with a smirk. “For once.”

Lyra giggled.

Cassian rolled his eyes and stood as the music started up again, a soft and cozy aria. He wrapped his wings around Nesta to hold her as they exchanged rings and swayed to the song, neither one of them thinking about all the careful, fancy steps it called for.


End file.
